In a — sort of — unanimous decision on Monday, the Supreme Court sent a case back to two lower courts for them to evaluate whether laws regulating social media content moderation in Florida and Texas would violate those platforms’ First Amendment rights to free speech.
In Moody v. NetChoice, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded the case involving a Florida “censorship” law because the lower courts hadn’t thoroughly analyzed the First Amendment questions surrounding the legislation. The ruling also functions as a decision — similarly vacated and remanded — for NetChoice v. Paxton, which dealt with Texas’ state law regulating social media content moderation.
The 9-0 decision had five justices authoring an opinion, with four justices concurring in full with Justice Elena Kagan’s opinion for the court.